How big a TV do I need?

[nrdstrm]

I have a 1080p 42" and sit between 5' and 10' from the TV (Different spots in the living room), so I guess to a certain extent I did OK...Doesn't really matter for me though since I bought a Vizo (dirt cheap, $999 @ costco)...

I just gave my brother a 32" I won at our company holiday party, and it looks really great (I'm not sure what the "P" rating is, but it's one of those 13xx by 9xx TV's...Says it can do 720p or 1080i, but I find that suspect...) I havn't been able to view HD on it yet though, as he doesn't have HD Direct TV yet (and no antenna for OTA)...All I have seen is SD TV (Direct TV) and the Wii (via rca, not component)...

[Tygerwoody]

Originally Posted by evilchris

Sticky this. I hate seeing people pay for 37" 1080p LCD's.

You'd have better luck getting this stickied in the Gaming Section. Sometimes I sincerely believe they sticky things there purely out of boredom. Most things stickied there now aren't even games. Surely you can get this stickied.

[BrianG]

In teh living room, we had a 42" 480p plasma and recently went to a 1080p 46" 120Hz LCD. The greatest benefit is a reduction in aliasing of downsampled 1080i and 720p source material on the 480p panel. Think railings in the stadium or striped shirts. Our viewing sitance varies from 8-12'. 1080i source material looks much better, 720p, similar, but cleaners and 480i is double washed (upconvert to 1080i by cable box and deinterlaced by the TV). We are right at the sweet spot.

[Imbroglio]

so the old viewing distance (in feet) * 5 = recommended screen size (in inches) still seems pretty true (I always tell people to go larger than that though)

[Zapablast05]

Originally Posted by BrianG

In teh living room, we had a 42" 480p plasma and recently went to a 1080p 46" 120Hz LCD. The greatest benefit is a reduction in aliasing of downsampled 1080i and 720p source material on the 480p panel. Think railings in the stadium or striped shirts. Our viewing sitance varies from 8-12'. 1080i source material looks much better, 720p, similar, but cleaners and 480i is double washed (upconvert to 1080i by cable box and deinterlaced by the TV). We are right at the sweet spot.

So what you're saying is that 480p is better than a 1080i, and 1080i is better than 1080p, therefore 480p is better than 1080p??

[amk21]

Are 1440p tv's even on the market?

[BrianG]

Originally Posted by Zapablast05

So what you're saying is that 480p is better than a 1080i, and 1080i is better than 1080p, therefore 480p is better than 1080p??

Not at all.

background
When we bought our plasma several years ago, there were EDTV 480p and HDTV "768p" plasmas on the market. We had a choice to make based on budget; get a lower quality 768p panel or get a higher quality 480p panel. At our viewing distance, it was difficult to see the difference on a 42" screen between a 480p and 768p panel. The kicker was that the higher quality 480p panel used the same scaler (processor that resizes images to fit a panels native resolution) as the highest quality 768p panels out of our budget.

The result was that the cheaper 768p panels had noticeable banding and micro-blocking when displaying any interlaced source media and odd aliasing effects in 720p source material. The 480p panel, as it either line-doubled 480i content or downscaled 1080i or 720p, consistently had better image quality ***from our viewing distance***. I have several friends that are AV freaks and none of them would believe that our 480p panel was such a "low" resolution, prior to getting close enough to it to perceive the screen door effect (~8').
/background

When it came time to get a new TV, we went up a size notch to 46", so 720p would be about the minimum for our living room. None of the manufacturers make 720p panel with the latest tech, so we went with a 1080p 120Hz panel from Sharp as it does such a great job with 480i DVD source material, keeping pace with sports motion and upscaling 720p. A local shop put them on sale after black Friday and we made Best Buy price match. They lost about three hundred. The Sharp is a better TV, but we do not see as huge a difference in final picture quality between the 42" 480p plasma and the 46" 1080p LCD as most would expect. The comments you quoted were a bit confusing in retrospect, but I was highlighting the advantages of the LCD over the plasma, not the source material.

So the moral to the story is, scalers are as important the panels specs. You can have the highest resolution panel on the market, but if the engine driving the panel sucks, it will look horrible.

[lduguay]

Originally Posted by amk21

Are 1440p tv's even on the market?

I typing on a 2560x1600 monitor..
But yeah, there is no 1440p yet

[Ruined]

I like 60" at 8'.

[agentkay]

I'm 5 to 6 feet from my 46" HDTV.

[emacs]

a graph is not needed. the optimal viewing distance is about twice the diagonal length of the display.

[evilchris]

Originally Posted by emacs

a graph is not needed. the optimal viewing distance is about twice the diagonal length of the display.

That isn't the only point of the graph.